


postscript

by nimrodcracker



Series: i'll sleep with the stars tonight [8]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Aromantic Shepard, F/F, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-13 15:55:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9131332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimrodcracker/pseuds/nimrodcracker
Summary: She's on a bed in a foreign place, hooked up to a drip and other medical devices - and the last time this happened, she was in a Cerberus facility.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Since I'm SO done with 2016's maddening penchant of killing off people and fictional characters (and being an all-round Mess™) here's a little fix-it for ME3's ending.

_What is love?_   Shepard wonders, as if her life isn't gushing out in crimson from the hole in her side.

For one, she's never believed in romance. Or attachment. (whatever that means). Everyone close to her dies, one way or another, and she's well-acquainted with the associated feelings of grief and loss. It's been anything but pleasant.

Naturally, Shepard keeps Ashley at a distance. (the most logical course of action). Neither does she tell Ashley that. (what's the point?)

And she never does. (it's only merciful).

But Shepard reveals all in the farewell note she completes on the Citadel, just moments after Anderson falls harrowingly quiet. _the dead always are._ Perhaps she's writing this only because she's about to die. Because Ashley took the brave - _foolish_ \- first step to plunge into the abyss of loving her _that_ way. So this, this note is a courtesy. An eulogy, an apology of the person who used to fill the spaces in Ashley's life.

 _Isn't love giving up everything to keep the ones you value safe?_ Shepard wonders, as if she isn't struggling to push back the creeping blackness at the edges of her vision.

She settles on an answer the moment her eyes see no more, the trill of a sent message reaching her ears.

_Yes. Which you've always done._

* * *

 

She wakes up confused.

She isn't supposed to wake up, but here she is, on somewhere soft and cool, aches springing up in her body even with the slightest of movements. She can't move her head - let alone her limbs - so she moves her eyes. What she first sees is white: first the ceiling, then the walls, before the pattern is disrupted by a window. As wide as the room, as tall as her... she thinks. She can't see the whole length.

Wariness creeps in. She's on a bed in a foreign place, hooked up to a drip and other medical devices - and the last time this happened, she was in a _Cerberus_ facility.

How long has it been? Days? Months? Years?

If so, the thought of ripping out the needle in her arm to stick it in her eyeball doesn't sound half bad. Death will claim her in minutes, and she'll be put out of her misery forever...

Or wake up again in another simulation.

She can't summon the energy to even _think_ of a curse.

Periodic beeps punctuate the stillness of the room, but what holds her attention are the trees outside the clear glass. From what little she can see, there's blackened trunks and bombed-out buildings holding up a gloomy sky that reminds her of rainstorms. Not very secret lab-like, to be frank.

The realisation jolts her. _Vancouver._ This is the same view from her room in Vancouver, during her months of detention.

And now, she wilts at how the instinct of escape hadn't crossed her mind, not even before considering death.

She's on Earth. It's a thought that surfaces as she unclenches her muscles, managing to will her dead arms to move, because the blanket is more stuffy than warm by now and she wants it _off_. It would've been tossed away long ago, if she could sense the mass effect currents swirling around her - but now, her biotics are dulled, even to the currents inside her.

Come to think of it, she feels bandages cover most of her body. Even her toes, she discovers, as she twiddles them from under the sheets.

"Skipper?"

Shepard tenses, daring not to ruin the moment.

Her first thought is that she's dreaming; this isn't real, it's _just_ a simulation she's forced to experience thanks to people out to break her. Doesn't matter who and why, just that there are - she remembered _dying_ , for God's sake.

But this is the voice she'll recognise even if she's deafened in both ears. This is a voice she'll kill to hear again even if it means dying ten times over.

Another jolt of realisation. _She already did._ Not quite dead from bleeding her soul out from the wound on her side, but alive enough to slam a button to end the Reapers, once and for all. A resultant explosion, and then, blackness.

This time, Shepard's neck muscles are thankfully compliant, and amidst the ringing _don't_ s between her ears, she turns her head to her right.

It hurts to smile - to even _move_ \- but what is that compared to the gift of a second chance?

 _Made it_ , Shepard tries to say, but all that tumbles out is a high-pitched wheeze. Words, inchoate as a rush of air. But no different than before, since she's always been a mess around her; _especially_ around her.

" _Shh._ " Ashley all but leaps from her seat to Shepard's side. One of her hands rest on Shepard's shoulder, but her touch is gentler still, as if mere touch can shatter a body forged in flame and war. "Shh. It's okay. You're safe now."

Ashley hasn't been sleeping. Shepard may have just woken from a coma, but she isn't that blind to not notice the dark rings around her eyes.

Somehow, Shepard finds the strength to raise her right hand; fingers travelling up Ashley's arm to frame Ashley's cheek. Fresh tears appear in Ashley's eyes - disbelief? _relief_? - and Shepard's tempted to roll her eyes at the sappiness of the moment. Maybe she does but doesn't realise it, because Ashley snorts messily and grasps Shepard's raised arm in support.

Yet, Ashley doesn't speak. All she does is watch her while tracing circles on the skin of Shepard's arm, the parts covered not by bandages. Regarding her like how adherents would revere their God.

Shepard would've found Ashley's behaviour strange - she's never been able to distinguish between the platonic and romantic anyway - but the sensation of fingers on her skin soothes more than unnerves, so she says nothing.

She decides that even if this isn't real, it's one worth staying in.

Outside, streaks of orange bleed into the murkiness of the sky; the coming of a morning to chase away the night. And what a long night it's been.

"Told you I'd be fine," Shepard utters, throaty and slowly, with all the grace a bedridden veteran can summon. The moment she speaks, Ashley squeezes Shepard's arm in encouragement - or at least, that's what Ashley tells herself, because she knows full well that extracting Shepard - _alive_ \- from the Citadel's floating rubble was no less than a miracle.

They're soldiers. They know full well that dying is an occupational hazard.

"Mia, I..." Whatever reply Ashley had in mind falls apart in her throat; instead, she's shaking her head, shaking all over as if to shake off the doubts that cling to her like pyjaks. Every night spent by Shepard's bedside was another chance that her skipper would never wake; the passage of time marked with strokes of ink on the pages of her poetry book she's been reading to her skipper every night. "Just don't do that again. Hell, _never_ do that again. Mia, you don't know how m-"

Shepard cuts Ashley off, tugging her down to kiss her square on the lips.

Ashley stiffens at first, dumbfounded by Shepard's sudden bravado because Hermina Shepard doesn't show any ounce of romantic attraction to anyone _at all_ but _Hermina Shepard is kissing her_. For real. All the years of wondering where she stood with her skipper, finally laid to rest with a kiss that Ashley wholeheartedly leans into. Maybe her skipper doesn't even mean it romantically, but that isn't really important, is it?

What's important is that it's as wonderful as she imagined it would be. Shepard's lips are amazingly soft, save the scar on her upper lip; its coarseness sending a thrill down Ashley's spine. But beyond all that, it feels so... _right_.

When they pull away for air, it's Shepard who speaks first, who breaks the wonder of the moment; but not the tingling that Ashley _knows_ she isn't the only one feeling it. And somehow, Ashley finds herself stroking Shepard's cheek as she leans over her, close enough for them to touch foreheads.

"I chose death so you could live." Shepard's words are clinical, but her tone is soft, murmured like an absolute truth.

It's enough to make Ashley sigh as she brushes Shepard's indigo-blue locks out of her eyes and back over her forehead; at least, whatever strands that haven't been burnt away. "I know, skipper. I saw your farewell note. But not very farewell anymore, though."

Shepard's expression softens. "I'm sorry I took so long."

_To give us a chance. To realise that was better than not at all._

Shepard, ever the martyr. Shepard, the last person ( _ever_ ) who owed the galaxy an apology.

"Doesn't matter, Mia. We have the rest of our lives now."

Shepard's hand snakes towards Ashley's on the bed, before twining her fingers in hers. Tightly. "You know nothing will stop me from loving you, right?"

Ashley takes a few heartbeats to reply, to even move; the understated sincerity in Shepard's words overwhelming. "You don't have to show me, Shepard. You already have."

Honest to God, Shepard has the faintest on what it means to love people _that_ way, and neither is she personally interested in finding out what that means. But knowing that whatever she's done is enough for Ashley shakes her to her core... in a good way. It's another reminder that she's not broken. Just different.

Shepard returns a blank, unfocused gaze; her one bruised eye blinking slowly as the events of the last few weeks begin to fall in place. "I did, didn't I?"

"Hell of a way to impress a girl by dying for her, skipper."

Shepard smiles at that. It's a slight quirk of her lips, but overwhelmingly serene - just like that time during the mad dash to the Citadel beam, when she sent Ashley off with treasured words and a sweet gesture.

Reliving that memory sends a pang through Ashley's chest, but that's a memory from another time. From another world, where Reapers still lurked at the fringes of their sight to send them to their deaths.

"Ash?" Shepard interrupts, squeezing Ashley's hand firmly.

"Nothing." On impulse, Ashley presses a finger to Shepard's lips. "Just kiss me, Mia. I'm owed at least a year's worth."

Before Shepard can protest, Ashley shuts her up with another kiss.

No doubt watching Shepard charge to her death will haunt Ashley's dreams still, but this time, she'll have new ones to think of.

This isn't like the fairytale endings in the vids, but it's an ending all the same. A soft epilogue, for hardened hearts and weary warriors.

It's enough.


End file.
